At Computex earlier this year, Intel had talked about 4K panels becoming more affordable (monitors around $400). The 4K All-in-Ones using those panels were on display at IDF. We grabbed a few photographs and they are linked in the gallery below.

Gallery: IDF 2014: 4K AIOs

The PLS panels have great viewing angles. Importantly, they also support full 60 Hz refresh rates even at the maximum resolution (UHD). Consumers worried about the usage of TN panels and lower refresh rates to hit the advertised price point have nothing to fear. Since Intel is pushing this effort, it makes sense that they first concentrate on the All-in-One (AIO) market which helps them sell their CPUs. The AIO models should go on sale soon, and Intel expects that Samsung will push these 23.6" panels into monitors very soon. The AIO models that were on display were high-end configurations with i7 processors and expected to come in around $1000, but cheaper models with less powerful CPUs are also on the way. [ Update: The systems on display are highly customizable Thin Mini-ITX-based AIOs. The 4K AIOs are anticipated to begin at prices of $999, but the systems on display (as configured with a 4th Gen Intel Core i7-4770S and Intel SSDs) were closer to the $1500 mark. In particular, the system in the gallery above is a Mitac M980, which will be available as a whitebox system to distributors and other OEMs]

If you’re one of the millions who started taking one of those Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) offered by the likes of Stanford and MIT, only to abandon it after hours of watching video-taped lectures, reading static course materials, and marginally helpful online discussions, you’ve gotten a taste of what’s being inflicted on the current generation of students. That’s a bug that Versal, a company launched by Gregor Freund—the former CEO and chief technology officer of security software company Check Point Software—is trying to fix.

While MOOCs and other e-learning platforms have made it cheaper to reach large numbers of students with course content, they haven’t necessarily made it any better than sitting (or falling asleep in) a lecture hall. Versal aims to make online learning more interactive in the face of this. The company has launched an open JavaScript-based interface and a Web-based developer tool to allow programmers and teachers to create their own interactive elements for courses to more fully engage students.

Versal is “targeted at a broader audience than MOOCs,” Freud told Ars. “Existing systems are far too limiting. MOOCs are fine for people who go Stanford and have perfect recall.”

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Smartphone sizes, from tiny to ludicrous. Click to embiggen! At 100 percent, the devices here should be pretty close to actual size on most monitors. Aurich Lawson

It’s nearing the end of the year, and that means new iPhones are afoot. Apple has stuck to a September or October release date for its latest smartphones since 2011, and the most noteworthy thing about this year’s Apple harvest is that the iPhones are bigger—like, almost Galaxy Note-style bigger, at the top end.

From 2007 to late 2012, iPhones all had a single display size: 3.5 inches. The exterior and interior were revised a number of times, but the screen size remained constant for a plethora of reasons (not the least of which was to ensure app compatibility and consistency across the line). Android handset manufacturers, on the other hand, latched onto display size as a product differentiator, both from Apple and from each other. This resulted in a cornucopia of varying screen sizes in the Android world, up to and including the comically huge Samsung Galaxy Mega, which isn’t so much a phone as it is a stunted tablet that you hold up to your face and talk into.

And it’s not just Android devices that are aiming big, either. Devices like the Lumia 1520 allow Windows Phone fans to rip the stitching in their pockets along with the Android crowd. Even with the majority of Windows Phone devices being manufactured by Nokia, screen size is still an easy thing to use to make different models stand out.

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Today, the USB-IF brought me in to see the long-awaited USB Type C cables. We've written about this before, but for those that aren't familiar with this new USB spec, the USB Type C cable and USB 3.1 spec are designed with the future in mind. As a result, there are a lot of new features to talk about. We'll start with the USB 3.1 spec before we get into the Type C connector.

With USB 3.1, we see a few key improvements. Peak throughput goes to 10 Gbps from 5 Gbps, which translates to a peak of 1.25 GB/sec. In a demo of an early controller with two SSDs attached to the system I saw peak throughput of 833 MB/sec. As a side note, I also saw a demo of wireless USB connectivity from smartphone to laptop and laptop to smartphone, which was definitely pretty cool. Getting back to the USB 3.1 spec, USB Power Delivery 2.0 (PD) makes it possible for USB to supply up to 100 watts, and coexists with the BC 1.2 spec that is used in USB power adapters to charge phones so a single port would be able to provide power for both systems. In addition, USB PD 2.0 allows for power to go both ways without changing the direction of the cable, so a laptop would be able to send and receive power from the same port. Finally, USB Type-C extensions mean that it's possible to do all kinds of interesting applications over USB ports, such as sending audio and video data. It's even possible for a USB Type C port to send PCI-E data through the connection for use cases such as a two in one convertible tablet.

This opens up the possibility for a dock scenario where a single cable to the monitor can charge a laptop and also mirror the laptop's display onto the external monitor, and the external monitor would also be able to serve as a USB hub for a keyboard, mouse, headsets, flash drives, and other USB peripherals. While the laptop charging aspect and integrated USB hub in display wasn't demonstrated in the prototype I saw, everything else was fully working as shown in the photo above.

I was also able to get some photos of the cable and receptacle. Unfortunately it took flash to really show the detail in the connector but it definitely will be a great standard for all kinds of applications. While I'm sure that there will be differences in the final product, the reversible plug works just like expected and could be quickly inserted from behind the back. The USB-IF believes that this standard will show up in products shipping in 2015. It does seem that the connector is a bit less compact than microUSB, but the benefits outweigh this increase in size.

Mobile phone footage has captured the moment a minivan carrying a couple was swept off Interstate 15 in Moapa, Nevada.

Kurds are regaining parts of northern Iraq seized by Islamic State militants last month and say they are ready to take part in a broader action.

Flickr user Charles Strebor

To what degree do genes determine how intelligent we are? It's a question with a lot of social implications, given the potential for people to get lumped into categories based on their inheritance—or for them to make a self-fulfilling prophecy out of it.

But so far, at least, science hasn't been able to find much of a direct link between genetic variants and intelligence. When scientists have focused on specific genes involved in the nervous system's growth and function, they've found a few hints of associations, but those haven't held up in large population studies. Large population studies that scanned the entire genome have also come up empty.

Now, we may have a good idea why. A massive and thorough genetic study has looked into the question and, despite all the effort involved, has only come up with three genes, none of which have a very large effect on cognitive abilities.

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The president of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan, has ordered election banners with the slogan "Bring Back Jonathan 2015" to be taken down.

The video games studio behind Minecraft is in talks to be taken over by Microsoft, according to reports.

Presenters at a US TV station had a shock on Wednesday morning when a bat started flying around their studio.

The crew members in Russia's Soyuz space capsule have successfully landed in Kazakhstan.

Hundreds of thousands of Catalans are expected to create a giant 'V' on the streets of Barcelona on Thursday.

For those that do will not settle for anything less than the best, Corsair has their gigantic AX1500i power supply. This is their new 1500W flagship behemoth, and it's also one of the first 80 Plus Titanium certified units worldwide. It has a massive list of features, including Corsair Link compatibility. However, could it possibly be worth the absurd $449.99 retail price? Read on to find out.

Version:next-20140911 (linux-next) Released:2014-09-11

The actor Richard Kiel, famous for playing Jaws in two James Bond films, has died at the age of 74.

At WWDC this year, Apple announced iCloud Drive to compete with the cloud storage offerings of other companies. Previous to this, iCloud did not offer the file and folder sync capabilities of other cloud storage competitors, and Apple is hoping iCloud Drive will be the answer. It is a very competitive market right now though, with some pretty major price cuts by the major players this year including Dropbox, Microsoft, and Google.

Apple has now announced the full pricing structure for iCloud Drive which is more competitive than before. Just a few months ago, Apple only offered up to 50 GB in iCloud, and charged $100 USD per year for it. Google Drive at the time offered 100 GB for only $24 USD per year, so clearly some price adjustments needed to be done.

Apple iCloud Comparison   iCloud iCloud Drive Free Storage 5 GB 5 GB Lowest Tier (USD/year) 10 GB / $20 20 GB / $12 Second Tier (USD/year) 20 GB / $40 200 GB / $48 Third Tier (USD/year) 50 GB / $100 500 GB / $120 Fourth Tier (USD/year) N/A 1 TB / $240 Lowest Cost/GB $2 / GB $0.24 / GB

With the new prices, Apple is offering quite a bit of choice as far as storage tiers, and with a 20 GB option for only $0.99 per month, and Apple now offers tiers up to 1 TB which is in line with many competitors. Unfortunately they have not touched the free tier, which stays at 5 GB.

These new prices are much better per gigabyte than previously offered, with the 200 GB tier exactly the same price per gigabyte as both OneDrive and Google Drive, however none of the other tiers really come close. For $0.99/month, you can get 20 GB on iCloud Drive, but for only $2/month you can get 100 GB on both OneDrive and Google Drive. The higher tiers get even more out of sync, with Apple asking $240 for 1 TB of storage, but Microsoft offers 1 TB of storage and a full version of Office for $70 per year, or 5 x 1 TB and 5 installs of Office for $100 per year. Google comes in at 1 TB for $120 per year, and DropBox just lowered their pricing with 1 TB per year for $100.

It would seem Apple is hoping that users of its products will be willing to pay more for iCloud Drive to keep the experience all within the Apple ecosystem, and it might not be the wrong move. They have shown in the past that their customers are willing to spend more for the Apple products than competitors can accomplish, and Apple has traditionally not competed much on price so this may work out well for them, but it must be said, all of the consumer cloud offerings do support the Mac already, and several are available and popular on iOS as well, so it may be difficult to come to the game this late with a higher price than the competition.

A large text file billed as a list of usernames and passwords for more than 4.9 million Google accounts is likely a collection of credentials from different sources, not from a breach of the company's systems, Google stated on Wednesday.

The file was leaked to the Bitcoin Security board on Tuesday by a user known as "tvskit" who claimed that more than 60 percent of the passwords were good, according to translated content on Russian news site RT. Yet, in its own analysis, Google found that only 2 percent of the credentials would have worked and an even smaller number been used successfully.

"Our automated anti-hijacking systems would have blocked many of those login attempts," the company's spam and abuse team said in the analysis. "We’ve protected the affected accounts and have required those users to reset their passwords."

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CUPERTINO, CA—Yesterday Ars brought you some coverage of a couple of highly anticipated products from Apple: the iPhone 6, the iPhone 6 Plus, and the Apple Watch. Because the company is so secretive, its event was the first time the public was able to see what products would be in stores in the coming year.

Apple has long been a trend-setter in consumer electronics, though it seems that its latest product line doesn’t take too many conceptual chances, but instead offers an alternative to products that other companies have already put forward in the market—a phone with an oversized screen, a wristwatch, and of course, Apple Pay, which was also announced on Tuesday, has long existed in the Android universe as Google Wallet.

With this in mind, Ars was eager to get our hands on these new products and take them for a spin to see what it means for consumers, who now have more options in smartphones and wearables, but also for developers who now have a new market to make apps for. Unfortunately, our time with the phones and the watch was short, and the space in which we were able to test them was jam-packed with people. We’ll have to wait until later this month for a true iPhone 6 and 6 Plus review. And we’ll have to wait even longer for an Apple Watch review, or even for a proper hands-on, as the only Apple Watches we were allowed to wear were set on a pre-selected loop of watch faces and haptic feedback (which Apple calls “taptic feedback”). Apple handlers, however, were equipped with Apple Watches that had some limited interactive capability.

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rtThe competition in the cloud storage space has never been so intense. It is also a vast landscape of different features, free storage sizing, paid storage tiers, and API support. Today Microsoft has addressed some of the criticisms against OneDrive with an increased file size limit, faster syncing, Windows shell integration, and tweaks to the web interface to make the cloud storage easier to use, and more flexible.

One of the limitations of OneDrive has been the maximum file size of 2 GB. That is being bumped up today to 10 GB per file. That will certainly help with most files bumping into the limit, but is certainly not class leading. Dropbox also has a 10 GB upload limit, but that is only on the web interface, with files uploaded via the desktop application or mobile apps have no file size limit. Google Drive has a 5 TB limit on an individual file. It is good to see OneDrive increase this limit, but it seems shortsighted to set it so low especially when they have upgraded all Office 365 plans (personal and business) to 1 TB of storage per user. This feature is available today for OneDrive, and will be coming soon for OneDrive for Business.

Consumer Cloud Offerings   OneDrive Google Drive iCloud DropBox Box Amazon Cloud Drive Free Storage 15 GB 15 GB 5 GB 2 GB 10 GB 5 GB Paid Storage (USD/year) 100 GB - $24
200 GB - $48
1 TB (Office 365 Personal) - $70
5 x 1 TB (Office 365 Home) - $100 100 GB - $24
1 TB - $120
10 TB - $1200
20 TB - $2400
30 TB - $3600 20 GB - $12
200 GB - $48
500 GB - $120
1 TB - $240 1 TB - $100 100 GB - $120 20 GB - $10
50 GB - $25
100 GB - $50
200 GB - $100
500 GB - $250
1 TB - $500 Versioning Office files (30 days) Yes (30 days) No Yes (30 days)
Unlimited with PackRat addon No (Personal Tier) No File Restore Yes (30 days) Yes (30 days) No Yes (30 days)
Unlimited with PackRat addon Yes (30 days) Yes Operating System Support Windows
OS X
Android
iOS
Windows Phone Windows
OS X
Chrome OS
Android
iOS Windows
OS X
iOS Windows
OS X
Linux
Android
iOS
BlackBerry
Kindle Fire Windows
OS X
Android
iOS
Windows Phone
BlackBerry Windows
OS X
Android
iOS
Kindle Fire

Another improvement to the service is to increase the number of files that can be uploaded or downloaded at any one time. If you are syncing a directory, this should dramatically increase the sync speed with Microsoft’s internal testing giving approximately a 300% increase in speed.  Assuming you have enough bandwidth from your ISP, this could be a very welcome change. The parallel syncing feature will be rolling out worldwide in the coming weeks.

A missing feature that I have personally bumped into many times is the inability to share OneDrive files from within Windows Explorer. This is also changing beginning with Windows 7 and Windows 8 clients. Right clicking in the shell will now offer the ability to share a link, or give more options if you would rather share by account name. This feature is a part of the Modern version of OneDrive, so it is good to see it coming to the desktop as well, and continues the trend of de-emphasizing the Start Screen experience. Windows 7 and 8 clients have begun rollout of this new feature, and Windows 8.1 and Mac should be available soon.

The final change to OneDrive affects only the web interface. As of today, folder uploads are now supported over the web, which is a feature that was previously only available in the client applications. Folders can be uploaded by using the Upload button and choosing a folder, or folder drag and drop is also supported in the web interface for browsers that support that feature. Currently, only Google Chrome supports this feature, but other browsers will be able to if the browser adds support.

OneDrive faces stiff competition in the cloud storage market, and these features are a welcome addition. The 10 GB file size is clearly a big improvement over the previous 2 GB limit, but when you offer 1 TB of space, 10 GB files may not be the largest a client wants to upload, so hopefully this will be increased again in the near future, if even for just the OneDrive client applications. Improved sync speed is of course always welcome. The folder uploads is also a nice bonus, but being able to share OneDrive files and folders by using Windows Explorer is the most welcome addition to how I use the service.

U2's new Songs of Innocence. U2

I'm not here to tell you what music you should be listening to, but I can tell you I haven't really liked an album that U2 has put out since 1991's Achtung Baby. That's why I wasn't really excited when Tim Cook and Bono told me I could download the band's new album, Songs of Innocence, for free on iTunes as part of Apple's big product event yesterday. Thanks but no thanks, fellas.

I forgot that the album release even happened within an hour of leaving the Flint Center yesterday, which is why I was surprised to see it show up in my iTunes library all by itself today. I had assumed the album would be something you'd need to opt into, but apparently in its quest to be part of the "biggest album release in history," Apple went ahead and attached it to iTunes accounts by default. It has begun to show up in iTunes libraries automatically, and if you have automatic music downloads enabled on your iPhone, it may have even downloaded without you realizing it.

People don't tend to like it when their digital media libraries are altered without their consent. Just look at the time when Disney pulled purchased movies from customers' libraries this past holiday season, or the time Amazon deleted copies of George Orwell's 1984 from customers' Kindles. This U2 thing, while adding to your media library rather than subtracting from it, has already caused a minor rash of Twitter complaints nonetheless (just search "iPhone U2").

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